Martini, one of motor racing's most iconic sponsors, is set to bring its famous white, blue and red colour scheme back to Formula 1 with Williams this year.

After months of speculation suggesting Martini could become Williams's title sponsor, sources have revealed that an agreement has been reached that will result in a full rebranding of the Williams car.

This advanced state of the negotiations was highlighted this week when images of an official Martini-branded Williams shirt appeared on a merchandising website briefly before being removed.

Martini's return to F1 will be its first involvement since it was a sponsor of Ferrari from 2006-08, but at that time its logos only had a small presence on the car.

AUTOSPORT has learned that Martini's decision to go with Williams followed talks with a number of leading teams, including McLaren and Ferrari, about a sponsorship deal.

In the end Martini decided that the attraction of a title deal - with the team set to become Williams Martini Racing - and the prospect of a full-branding opportunity were too good to resist.

The details of the new livery are still being finalised, and are unlikely to be signed off until the team has sorted its line-up of sponsors. A deal with insurance company Genworth was announced this week and Williams is poised to add a deal with Petrobras imminently.

There has been no official confirmation of the Martini news from Williams, with the team declining to comment on the situation when contacted by AUTOSPORT.

However the team has said several times that its race livery will be revealed before the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

MARTINI IN FORMULA 1

Martini Racing originally entered F1 with the Tecno team in 1972 but the partnership did not yield much success and the drinks company pulled out of F1.

However, a return in 1975 as backer of the Brabham team proved to be a game-changer, as its iconic colours used on a white background achieved worldwide fame.

After that season, Martini elected to switch its branding onto a red background. It remained at Brabham until the end of 1977.

Martini moved to Lotus for 1979 but, while it did have a heavy presence, it did not take on the full branding of the car to the same extent.

After an unsuccessful campaign, Martini withdrew from F1 but it returned in 2006 as a minor sponsor of Ferrari when again its logos featured on a nose.

Its return to F1 in 2014 will be its first fully-branded grand prix car since 1978.

Outside F1, Martini's famous colours featured heavily in sportscars and touring cars - but it was perhaps best known for a tie-up with Lancia in rallying.

Having won Nissan's GT Academy online competition in 2011, which included an on-track race at Silverstone, Mardenborough entered the world of motorsports.

Competing in sportscars, he went on to contest Formula 3 with Carlin where he finished sixth in the British Formula Three Championship.

His efforts caught the attention of Red Bull team boss Horner who will now race the 22-year-old in his Arden International team in GP3.

"I feel ready for GP3," he said. "I've prepared well and I have all the right people around me to help my development, so I can fully focus on my racing.

"I haven't raced the GP3 car yet but, going on initial testing, I prefer the GP3 car to an F3 car. The power is very addictive! This season is my opportunity to impress more people in the sport who make the decisions on who makes it into F1 and who doesn't and I'm going to give it my best shot.

"F3 has taught me so many things, both in the car and out of the car, both mentally and physically. It was a great stage in my development and I'm sure the skills I've learnt there will help me in GP3 and beyond."

However, Mardenborough is already looking to the future and told Sky Sports Online that he dreams of Formula One.

"That will be the ultimate goal, but we are just trying to see how far we can go up the ladder and see if I can keep improving. If I keep improving then I think that is possible," he said.

Formula 1's pre-season testing programme gets back underway in Bahrain on Wednesday, with all eyes on Renault's promised engine fixes.

The French marque endured a disastrous first test at Jerez two weeks ago and has promised changes both to the engine hardware and software that is hoped will allow its four teams to rack up significant mileage in the two remaining tests in Bahrain.

With the Lotus E22 making its public debut in Bahrain having run two promotional event days at Jerez on February 8-9 and managing 100kms on the second of those days, reigning champion Red Bull is the team with the smallest mileage completed.

That makes this week potentially decisive in Red Bull's hopes of defending its title as with the engine $#@!logation deadline on February 28, time is running out to troubleshoot problems if they do arise.

But Renault's head of track operations Remi Taffin is confident that the work done away from the circuits has been effective.

"I don't think we are missing any facilities to try to work out the best way and to find problems and to solve them," said Taffin when asked by AUTOSPORT about Renault's dyno facilities.

"It's not like we have a raffle of problems, we had two or three big problems that we have now solved and that's why I am always talking about hardware and software.

"The hardware is on the line, but we have to do a lot of work on the software and calibration.

"That's the main area we are working on and we have the right facilities to do that. It's a question of time."

UPGRADES TO COME

Many cars ran at Jerez in a relatively basic launch specification with the focus on getting mileage on the engines.

It is anticipated that there will be a raft of front wing changes, in particular, in Bahrain because many teams ran initially with very similar packages to 2013.

With the wings now 150mm narrower than they were in 2013, more substantial changes are expected from those teams.

Sauber, for example, has confirmed that it will have a package that is close to Australian GP-specification, with new front and rear wings as well as other aerodynamic detail work.

"In Bahrain we are going to have an aerodynamic package that should be almost in race trim, except for a few components maybe," said chief designer Eric Gandelin.

"So the idea is to be ready on the mechanical side and we can get there and start to work on performance."

WHO IS FASTEST?

Mercedes emerged as the star turn of the Jerez test, not because of its outright pace but because of reliability and engine performance.

Crucially, it was the only team to complete a proper race simulation, with Nico Rosberg managing to go five laps beyond the 69-lap race distance at Jerez.

While this put the marque's works team, and Mercedes-powered Williams, Force India and McLaren, in an encouraging position only in Bahrain will the watching world start to see any hint of a competitive order.

Ferrari also showed well, particularly with the apparent drivability of its power unit, meaning that the Scuderia could also emerge as a pacesetter in Bahrain.

As for the Renault teams, their struggles in Spain mean that there is significant room for improvement. If the engines run well in Bahrain, the teams' so-far unseen potential will also begin to emerge.

This week's Bahrain test runs from Wednesday to Saturday, with the final test of winter 2014 also taking place at Sakhir from Thursday February 27 to Sunday March 2.

You can never write Red Bull off with Newey around but then again not all his designs have been proven race winners. This was a great read on Autosport+ so will post it for your enjoyment:

When Newey got it wrong

Adrian Newey is a design legend of F1, but even he gets it wrong sometimes. EDD STRAW looks back at five Newey creations that were at best unsuccessful, and at worst a total nightmare

MARCH-JUDD 891/LEYTON HOUSE-JUDD CG901

Adrian Newey's first technical directorship was with the Leyton House-owned March team. In 1988, the March 881 had set the template for the modern era of aerodynamics and was one of the few cars to occasionally trouble the McLaren-Hondas.

But the team struggled in 1989 with the March 891 and the following year with what was dubbed the Leyton House CG901, but what was to all intents and purposes the same as the previous year's car.

In the first six races of 1990, Ivan Capelli and Mauricio Gugelmin failed to qualify as often as not and, amid management turmoil (team principal Ian Phillips was laid up with meningitis), Newey saw the writing on the wall and accepted an offer to join Williams as chief designer. Effectively, he jumped before he was pushed.

"The 891 was troublesome to start with and that was mainly aerodynamically," said Newey of the car. "We had some gearbox problems at first but, once we had sorted those, the car wasn't as stable as the 881 had been.

"It wasn't until the first part of 1990 that we looked at the windtunnel itself and realised that the floor had bowed over a period of time and was giving completely false readings, sending us in the wrong direction."

Ironically, Capelli came within an ace of winning the race after Newey left, the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard.

In Mexico, a new floor/diffuser package had been introduced but the combination of bumpy track and poor readings from the windtunnel meant it didn't work. At ultra-smooth Paul Ricard it was another matter, and only a late fuel-pressure warning led to Capelli lifting, allowing Alain Prost's Ferrari to pass him for victory.

WILLIAMS-RENAULT FW16

It seems harsh to describe a car that took the constructors' championship as anything other than a success. But the ban on driver aids, specifically active ride, made life very difficult for Newey, then Williams chief designer, in 1994.

"The rule change banning active ride was a big problem," said Newey of the car, which in the first half of the season was capable of being rapid but was all too often on a knife-edge.

The dominant FW14B and FW15C of 1992 and '93 relied upon fine-tuning of ride heights for the aero platform to work and the '94 car proved too critical and prone to stalling.

Significant upgrades at Imola and Magny-Cours made the car more consistent and laid the foundation for Damon Hill's run at the world title.

MCLAREN-MERCEDES MP4-18

The unraced MP4-18 of 2003 lives in infamy on Newey's record. A series of delays while the MP4-17D - a highly evolved version of the '02 McLaren - raced on eventually turned into the permanent mothballing of the troublesome car.

When it first tested, at Paul Ricard, the short-sidepodded MP4-18 was instantly faster than its predecessor but managed only 28 laps. Hydraulic problems were a particular difficulty, and things turned from bad to worse in testing in June when Kimi Raikkonen and Alex Wurz suffered big accidents in Spain.

There were positives about the car, which was tightly packaged with a Mercedes engine that was planned to be lighter and more potent. But it struggled to pass its crash tests. "I wouldn't say it's radical," said Newey, but with innovations such as its exhaust chimneys it was distinctive.

Ron Dennis described the MP4-18 as the "mother" of the following year's MP4-19, with many design features carried over, although that machine only won once in 2004.

MCLAREN MP4-21

The 2006 McLaren failed to win a GP and, while Newey had left the team for Red Bull by the time it finally raced, he did contribute to the design.

The MP4-21 lacked downforce and aero efficiency and did not develop as well as needed throughout the season, but it would be harsh to hold Newey responsible for the overall failure of the car.

RED BULL-RENAULT RB3

The 2007 Red Bull was the first pukka Newey-designed car produced by the team, and did allow it to get to the front of the midfield fight. But with the Red Bull team still immature and Newey only having joined early in 2006, it was still raw.

The fundamental concept was good aerodynamically, but what Newey described as the "hurried" commissioning of the Bicester windtunnel by Jaguar (which became Red Bull ahead of the 2005 season) held it back.

"We had significant differences between how the windtunnel suggested the car should behave and how it actually did behave," said Newey.

"And given the very short time we had, we just looked at the parts that might be misbehaving and redesigned them based on my previous experience."

That went some way to solving the aerodynamic problems. But, and this will sound very familiar, the tight packaging of the seamless-shift gearbox caused major problems.

The result was overheating bearings as a result of too much compromise for aerodynamic advantage, and the majority of Red Bull's technical problems during 2007 were caused by the gearbox.

Kevin Magnussen set the pace as the second pre-season Formula 1 test in Bahrain got underway this morning.

The Dane eclipsed early pacesetter Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes by two tenths of a second, with Force India's Nico Hulkenberg completing a Mercedes-engined lockout of the top three places on the timesheet.

The Lotus E22 made its public debut, completing seven laps in the hands of Romain Grosjean.

The Frenchman was outpaced by Robin Frijns, who set the sixth fastest time for Caterham and completed 26 laps.

The problems continued at fellow Renault-powered outfits Red Bull and Toro Rosso, as neither squad completed any running in the morning.

Red Bull kept its RB10 out of sight behind garage doors as the team worked to get it running without success.

The Toro Rosso suffered an oil leak, so new signing Daniel Kvyat has yet to complete a lap.

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso caused the first red flag of the day when the Ferrari F14 T first left the pits billowing smoke thanks to an oil leak.

Alonso went on to set the fourth fastest time, 1.1s clear of Sauber's Adrian Sutil, who brought out the red flags again after spinning at Turn 1.

Felipe Massa's Williams and Jules Bianchi's Marussia only completed a handful of installation laps at the start of the test, which was delayed by 30 minutes due to confusion over the number of marshals present at the circuit.

Posting Permissions

PlayStation Universe

Copyright 2006-2014 7578768 Canada Inc. All Right Reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of Abstract Holdings International Ltd. prohibited.Use of this site is governed
by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.